h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Pre word; In March 2007, there was a talking point at the Front Page of H2G2, called;"unfulfilled dreams". I decided to write and used some postings from my own Journals.
Two days later, it suddenly makes sense to me to copy and paste it also here as a separate Journal posting. So, here it is.



I started life more or less as a rather autistic person.
In 1984 (34 years young) that all started to brake down and very slowly some senses started to feel; good and bad ones, although the last dominated heavily.

F134334?thread=305456

After 15 years of marriage I divorced from a life that appeared it never had been mine at all.
If I would ever feel any urge to ask for forgiveness (which I don’t feel), it would not be, because I left, but because I did stay that long.


Anyhow, around 1992 I started to experience my first passions, mainly because of love-relationships through which I discovered new world,
Like walking long distances.
Yes, may sound dull; indeed, you first need to find someone who inspires you to join walking and then you might find out what it can do for you.

When I was arrived by plane in Spain in Barcelona, I first did not know what to do. Suddenly I thought,” I’ll go to the Pyrenees" and so I did. After a week my girlfriend joined me at the camping I did stay and she invited me to make a walk to the top of a small mountain, maybe 1000 meters. That was the only "mountain" to be seen, but the place itself was already paradise for me, because of the magnificent colours of wild flowers, the sheep and the silence of nature. I did feel "connection".

So we walked to the top of that mountain and she arrived first and a minute later I arrived.
She had turned her back to me, to view the landscape at the other side of our "mountain".
Suddenly I saw what she saw and I felt on my knees and cried from
amazement. A whole parade of magnificent mountains in a row, and many of these with snow at the tops. I had never seen that before in my life, while I might have seen that as a child being in Switzerland many times, but then I would have registered it, not felt. I was absolutely locked up inside; with or without mountains.

Now I wasn't and a passion was born.
To keep it short.
A few years later (around 1994) I went on my own to the Pyrenees, while I already had walked long distances in Holland and learned all about camping.
So I went to the French Pyrenees after a run-up of three years outdoor experience. On my way to the French Pyr. By train, I witnessed a horrible accident, in which I was involved as a helper and after arriving in the Pyrenees for the first time after my Spanish adventure, the next day I already returned to the netherlands.

A year later I went again. To make a very long story short; I felt I’d found a home, that I was walking my own "poem",that this walking was a metaphor of life, while I discovered that the harsh moments in the mountains are nothing compared to my daily mental life in Holland. I felt at home, at ease,
This was the kind of "theatre" I liked from the bottom of my heart. This was “warm solitude”.
I'm talking of walking until the forest-lines in the mountains. I don't like climbing.

This was a landscape were nature - mountains - became my first friends.
I remember I once met a small river and very, very slowly I went to it, being afraid it would stop streaming, just because I was longing for its water.
Well, it kept streaming and so did my blood and heart for this landscape.
I walked on and on, while sleeping in small hotels. I did not want to carry a very heavy "burdon" on my back. That was a wise decision.
When summer arrived I left and returned to Holland.

After the holiday season ended, in September, of that same year, I returned and restarted my walk where I stopped before.
Same story; this was my first, very own home, my passion. I had walked half the length of the GR10 = West to East coast Pyrenees.

I realized it was risky at my age (44) to be that passionate in something one can only join in good health, but my body had always been full 100% healthy. Never been physical ill one day in my life.

But, I did have a small pain in my bottom, when I had bought a racing bicycle and tried it the first time, and after two years I got so sick of the severe pain, that I bought medicines to finish it for once and for all, because I also wanted to travel with my bike from Holland to Santiago in Spain, a road I crossed while walking (2 times) in the Pyrenees in that year in France.
And I also wanted to be able to sit like any other after these three years. I had ignored it and kept enjoying nature and culture.

Well, that self made "therapy" became a disaster without end. A horror film that only got worse and worse.
For years I had one great goal; to be able to walk on in these mountains. All the rest was not important to me.

But me being me; neurotic, nervous, inexperienced, and - as I later on discovered - self-destructive, I never returned. Unconsciously I had taken the passion out of my own hands. Alfredo apparently could not cope with so much joy. That was a big part of it, besides a lot of bad luck without end.

Around 2000 I gave up, and in itself it was a way of personal growth to do so; giving up what appeared not to be realistic anymore and try to create a new life.

And so I did; the first thing was getting to know H2G2 when I had my first computer and I started to write and write and write.
Besides other things I started also to paint since a few years and these days a good friend of mine has ordered someone to construct a studio for me at the Dutch Belgian border, where I can write, paint,
Enjoy silence and beautiful sunsets every day and fly my kite sometimes. It's a very romantic and large landscape.

I've become physically very week, because of poor sleep since 1984.
Maybe I'll ever revisit the mountains on a scooter. It was a strong wish in my good days, that, when I would have walked all the Pyrenees mountains, I would do it all over again.
Why?
To meet Alfredo, who had been walking there before, as a child that searched and did find its first home.
Meeting my own passionate history in the mountains and in doing so, getting very, very close to my inner self. Closer then ever before, in the warm safety of nature (that can be very harsh! But still).

But, without foreseeing it, every spring suddenly things start to move inside of me; some "black blood" rises in me; the old wound that's irritated by the invitation of springtime.

But I can cope with it and I'm grateful that after all these years I unexpectedly found new "homes" and "passions",(because my senses are very picky), but I'll keep an extra eye to myself, not to, well? Not to destroy this a second time, because "happiness" can sometimes feel very unusual for people like me.

I’ll finish here with a quote from my diary; “getting in contact with inner self”, half hidden in my Journal.


Quote;

“Today - April 2002 - I gave away my tent and backpack I used while walking half the Pyrenees in 1995.
Within a few years, the Pyrenees had become my greatest passion.
But I had not returned for reasons of personal fitness.

Today, my former masseur received my backpack.
My former love got my tent.
A landmark in my life.


An old Catalan song about the Pyrenees comes into my mind;



P Y R I N E O S .

"Ahora si que voy a dar,
un golde mas qua solida.
prque parece que va
el baile con alegria.

En los montes Pyrineos
me tengo de ir a vivir.
que dicen que alli se gana
la gloria a antes de morir.

Despedida y no partida
tuve anoche con mi amante.
despedida y no partida
porque el amor no se parte.



Translated in English;


p y r e n e e s .


Today I want to celebrate
a bit more than usual.
Since it seems the dance
is in full swing.

In the Pyrenees mountains
I ought to go and live.
For they say that there you get
to paradise before dying.

A goodby and not a farewell
did I bid from my lover last night.
A goodby and not a farewell
for love cannot be broken off".



Indeed,"for love cannot be broken off".
And for now I'm listening to my favourite composer, Henry Purcell.

The Tempest;

Amphitrite; "Halcyon days, now wars are ending. You shall find
wherever you sail. Tritons all the while attending,
with a kind and gentle gale".

Neptune; "See, see, the heavens smile, with clouds no more over-
cast. In this now happy Isle are all your sorrows past".

Amphitrite and Neptune; "No stars again shall hurt you from above, but all your
days shall pass in peace and love".

Chorus; "No stars again shall hurt you from above, but all your
days shall pass in peace and love".




I wonder what my coming journey is in life.
Sometimes I still unexpectedly long for these mountains.
The calm, the space, the trees and wind and views.
It has a sphere of diginity and of pre-historic times when there were glaciers who left their marks visibly.

My alliance with it's mountains, my very own mountains.

The French and Spanish border culture.

Nature in its great, inspiring and calming way, although it hides many real dangers.

It was in 1995 my very own journey, walking the western half of it,
on my own.

And when I had finally walked all the way from west to east (G10), I would have done all over again in the years after.
In thát case, I would have walked in my own footsteps, following my own passion and finally embracing myself."
End quote.

Thánks for this topic!

H2G2, a very good place to be and create and make friends.


Alfredo. Amsterdam